This article examines malnutrition, a complex issue that has wideranging implications in terms of patient experience and resources - evidence suggests that malnourished people are repeat attendees at GP surgeries, incur higher prescription costs and experience twice as many hospital admissions than well-nourished people. While there have been many hospital initiatives targeted at reducing the risks of malnutrition, in the community the solution remains challenging. Recommendations include arranging services so that health and social care professionals can work together to overcome nutrition issues, making extra resources available to combat malnutrition and improving the monitoring of patients' nutritional state. As healthcare shifts to a more community-based model, there needs to be a reallocation of resources from hospitals to community to ensure that efforts to tackle malnutrition have a more realistic chance of success.